Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Milanlıoğlu N. (Yürütücü)
TÜBİTAK Projesi, 2219 - Yurt Dışı Doktora Sonrası Araştırma Burs Programı, 2025 - 2026
This project investigates the strategy of humanitarian imperialism
employed by the British government to justify and consolidate its control over
Ottoman Sudan between 1821 and 1899. It aims to offer a new perspective on
British imperial policy by analysing how anti-slavery rhetoric and civilizing
discourses were used to frame imperial expansion as a moral obligation rather
than a political conquest.
Drawing upon a wide array of primary sources, including government
reports, travelogues, memoirs, and missionary writings, the study examines how
British actors presented Sudan as a space in need of rescue from despotism and
slavery. This framing not only shaped domestic public opinion but also
influenced foreign policy decisions. Furthermore, the project interrogates the
roles of missionary societies, abolitionist groups, and imperial institutions
in producing a moralized image of Sudan that legitimized British or European intervention.
While existing scholarship on British imperialism in Sudan has largely
focused on military campaigns and administrative structures (Deng 1995; Cockett
2010; Pakenham 1991), the ideological tools that enabled these
interventions—particularly humanitarian discourse—remain underexplored.
Scholars like Heartfield (2017), Forclaz (2015), and Morgan (2007) have
examined anti-slavery activism and missionary involvement, but their work often
centres on broader European contexts or later periods. For example, Amalia Ribi
Forclaz’s Humanitarian Imperialism (2015) analyses European anti-slavery
networks from 1880 to 1940, yet her work mostly postdates the era studied here
and largely excludes Sudan.
This project addresses this gap by offering an
integrated analysis of anti-slavery rhetoric, missionary agendas, and British
imperial strategies in Sudan during the Ottoman period. Sources such as the
correspondence of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and reports by
the London Missionary Society reveal how Sudan was framed as a land shackled by
slavery and in need of liberation. These discourses not only informed imperial
action but also contributed to the construction of a lasting religious and
racial divide in the region.
By focusing on the Sudanese case within the broader context of humanitarian imperialism, this research provides a critical intervention in both Sudanese historiography and studies of empire and offers a new framework for understanding the ideological foundations of colonial expansion.